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Sexual harassment

Pathetic but not surprising is how I would describe Herman Cain’s latest ‘oops’ moment. So blatantly ignorant was Cain’s inability to respond directly to a question on Libya – as current a major event as is out there – that if this doesn’t end his presidential run, I’m not sure what will.

Conservative media is turning against him (“Cain makes Rick Perry look like a Mensa president“), while diehard fans point fingers at the usual bogeymen and in the process prove once more that stupid is never pretty.

…this is more to do with the media, technology and media bias, than Cain’s lack of knowledge.

Today, almost everything is done under the eagle eye of camera and sound. When the MSM does the interviews, the MSM decides what the public will see or hear or read.

Cain’s error was in not knowing his limits, when to say yes to interviews and when to cancel and rest up. Two weeks of intense attacks and responses certainly would have put him off his game.

Fewer of those biased eagle eyes trained on Cain and the man would be doing great.

The man with “a lot of stuff twirling around in his head” is a moron. End of story. The Tea Party’s attempt to prove they’re not a racist bunch was slightly amusing and fun to watch for a while. Unfortunately for them, they chose an idiot and a creep who practices sexual harassment on women in his employ, to play the role of Black Republican. Failed. Time to move on.

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain struggled to answer a question about U.S. foreign policy toward Libya in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel editorial board Monday.

“Okay, Libya,” said Cain, glancing up. “President Obama supported the uprising, correct? President Obama called for the removal of [Muammar] Gaddafi. Just wanted to make sure we’re talking about the same thing before I say, ‘Yes, I agreed.

No, I didn’t agree,'” said Cain.”I do not agree with the way he handled it for the following reason,” Cain started, before cutting himself off. “Nope, that’s a different one.” Cain shifted in his chair, adjusted his jacket and looked up again.”I got all this stuff twirling around in my head,” he added.

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain’s wife says her husband would have to have a “split personality” if he sexually harassed women the way that recent allegations claim.

Last week, a fourth woman, Sharon Bialek, came forward to say she had been harassed when the then-National Restaurant Association CEO “put his hand on my leg, under my skirt and reached for my genitals” and he “grabbed my head and brought it towards his crotch.”

“To hear such graphic allegations an know that, that would have been totally disrespectful of her as a woman, and I know that’s not the person he is,” Gloria Cain told Fox News host Greta Van Susteren. “He totally respects women.”

“I look at especially this last lady and the things that she said, and I’m thinking he would have to have split personality to do the things that she said.”

A story in today’s New York Times offers a disturbing look at the smear tactics and threats the Cain campaign is using to intimidate the four women accusing the candidate of sexual harassment, and any women that might come forward in the future:

L. Lin Wood, the lawyer hired by the Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain to fend off sexual harassment accusations, has warned that any other women who might be considering coming forward with similar allegations “should think twice.”

On Wednesday morning, less than 24 hours after Karen Kraushaar identified herself as one of two women who had received monetary settlements relating to harassment allegations against Mr. Cain while working for the National Restaurant Association in the late 1990s, Ms. Kraushaar faced questions about a workplace complaint she filed at a subsequent job… Hours later, Rush Limbaugh seized on that report to argue that Ms. Kraushaar has “a pattern of whining.” […]

[S]he and the others confronted the challenges of taking on a presidential candidate: intensive scrutiny of their backgrounds and motives, encouraged and amplified in this case by conservative news outlets and commentators whose support for Mr. Cain as he battles the allegations has helped him weather the crisis so far.

Cain and his defenders aren’t bothering to conceal their intention to silence would-be accusers with bullying. The campaign has hired investigators to dig up dirt on the women. Many respected media outlets are becoming willing accomplices in the diversion of questioning the alleged victims rather than investigating Cain’s conduct.

A fourth woman is accusing Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain of sexual harassment — and this time, there is a name and a face to go along with the allegations.

Sharon Bialek, who is a registered Republican and tea party supporter, told reporters Monday that the then-CEO of the National Restaurant Association (NRA) had put his hand “under my skirt and reached for my genitals” while she was meeting with him about a job in mid-July 1997.

“She reached out to Mr. Cain for help in finding another job,” attorney Gloria Allred explained. “Mr. Cain, instead, decided to provide her with his idea of a stimulus package.”

Herman Cain’s wife, Gloria, will not be appearing on the Fox News Channel on Friday night after all, a person close to the talks told the Caucus.

Ms. Cain had indicated to the network earlier in the week that she would appear on “On the Record With Greta Van Susteren” on Friday night, but apparently had a change of heart. The person familiar with the talks, who requested anonymity to discuss private conversations, said that Ms. Cain did not entirely close the door on appearing on the network some time in the future.

Her decision comes as her husband continues to face questions about accusations of sexual harassment while chief executive of the National Restaurant Association.

I have one complaint here. Herman Cain recently described his wife’s height, in comparison to the woman who claimed sexual harrassment against Cain, he claimed his wife was shorter than him but he said she came up to his chin. The woman in the photo on the right comes up to his shoulder.

Herman Cain’s wife, Gloria, has not appeared on the trail or given an interview since her husband launched his campaign in May. But now she’s “in talks” with Greta van Susteren for a sitdown this Friday! Everyone be nice.

Here is a chance for Herman Cain to show his true colors (honestly, no pun intended.) He claims he has never committed sexual harassment offenses. Yet the terms of the settlement state that the parties who initiated the legal procedure had to remain anonymous.

Mr. Cain can waive that portion of the agreement in order to get the “truth” out. We’ll see how he handles it.

A potentially huge shoe is dropping in the Herman Cain harassment scandal: one of his accusers indicated through her lawyer on Tuesday that she wants to come forward and tell her side of the story.

Joel P. Bennett, an attorney to one of the two National Restaurant Association employees who allegedly accused Cain of sexual harassment, told the Washington Post on Tuesday that his client is currently barred from speaking by a mutual non-disparagement agreement with the organization. But he says that agreement is being violated by Cain already, who has taken to the press to slam the harassment claim as “baseless,” and that she now wants to come forward and reveal herself to set the record straight.

“It is just frustrating that Herman Cain is going around bad-mouthing the two complainants, and my client is blocked by a confidentiality agreement,” Bennett said. “The National Restaurant Association ought to release them and allow them to respond.”

Bennett told the Post that if his client, who now works in the federal government, were given permission to speak about the incident “then it is whole new ballgame.”

Cain said on Monday that the matter was out of his hands. “The policy of the [National Restaurant Association] is not to divulge that information,” he told an audience at the National Press Club. “Unless they have changed the policies, I was chairman of the board, as far as we are concerned, enough said about the issue. There is nothing else there to dig up.”

A top sexual harassment attorney told TPM earlier that Cain may have already violated the agreement with his public attacks on his yet unnamed accusers and it seems that Bennett, who confirmed that there was a non-disparagement clause, is on the same page. Either way, this opens up a whole new set of issues for Cain and the NRA, who are likely to come under heavy pressure to let the woman speak given Cain’s stated intent to clear the air on the incident. All this right as Cain was starting to see some rays of hope of surviving the week unscathed as conservatives rallied to his defense and few new details emerged about the case.

A call to a spokesman for Cain for comment on the development was not immediately returned.

Whose blacks are the best blacks? Ann Coulter knows: “Our blacks are so much better than their blacks,” she tells Sean Hannity while discussing Herman Cain and the sexual harassment allegations he’s facing. “Our,” of course, being conservatives (and not, say, the Coulter family); “their,” meanwhile, referring to liberals. And why bother even paying attention to boring old Ann Coulter? Because she has the best blacks. Duh.

Lillian McEwen is not one of the women whose name is generally associated with Justice Clarence Thomas and his contentious confirmation hearings for a Supreme Court seat.

But now, at age 65 and retired from a long legal career, with nothing to lose and a book to sell, Ms. McEwen is ready for that to change.

This week’s news that his wife, Virginia, had left voice mail for Anita Hill, asking her to apologize for “what you did with my husband” at the confirmation hearings, gave Ms. McEwen an unexpected opportunity to talk about Justice Thomas, the man she was romantically involved with for “six or seven years” in the 1980s. The phone call, she said in an interview Friday, makes sense to her.

For Ms. Thomas, she said, the accusation of sexual harassment made by Ms. Hill “still has to be a mystery, that he is still angry about this and upset about it after all these years, and I can understand that she would want to know why, and solve a problem if she could — I mean, acting as a loyal wife.”

But Ms. McEwen said she knew a different Clarence Thomas, one whom she recognized in the 1991 testimony of Ms. Hill, who claimed that he had repeatedly made inappropriate sexual comments to her at work, including descriptions of pornographic films.

Ms. McEwen said that pornography for Justice Thomas was “just a part of his personality structure.” She said he kept a stack of pornographic magazines, “frequented a store on Dupont Circle that catered to his needs,” and allowed his interest in pornography to bleed into his professional relationships.

“It starts inside,” she said, tapping her head during a 30-minute interview inside her three-story condominium in Southwest Washington. “And then your behavior flows from what it is that’s important to you. That’s what happened with him, certainly.”